Cheri Ezell was working as a goat milk farmer when she met her husband, Jim Vandersluis, a dairy farmer. She writes: “One day I entered the barn while he was milking and noticed an obviously ill calf. When I questioned what would happen to her, he told me regardless of the calf's illness, she would be sent to a livestock dealer where she would be sold for meat. I learned that dairy cows have READ ON
In July of 2015, after 20 years of running a goat dairy farm and an award-winning cheese company, Carol and Julian Pearce decided to go vegan. The owners of The Sanctuary at Soledad Goats in California announced that they would stop breeding goats for dairy and would begin producing dairy-free cashew cheeses instead. In an interview, the couple had the following to say when asked why they’d READ ON
Harold Brown is a former beef and dairy farmer. He was born on a cattle farm in Michigan and spent over half his life in agriculture. After a personal health crisis forced him to confront the incidence of heart disease in his family, he went vegan. Living in great health on a vegan diet led him to reexamine all of his previous assumptions about eating animals, and he soon experienced a profound READ ON
Chris Mills spent more than 20 years working on dairy farms in Ontario before going vegan. A trapper and avid hunter, he wound up marrying a vegetarian in his early thirties, when he also began working highway construction. While conversations with his wife planted some seeds, Chris points to the defining moment as the day a truck hauling pigs to slaughter stalled by his work site on the highway. READ ON
Michelle is a former dairy farmer who worked on dairy farms for 15 years. About the industry, she says: "It is a deceptive place. Only the ones who are inside really know that. I am not talking about a one hour visit to the farm... Whoever is really inside, knows what kind of place it is. It’s hell. There is terrible suffering there... The screams of the mothers … I still hear the sound. It won't READ ON
Dr. T. Colin Campbell is an American biochemist whose research focuses on the effects of human nutrition on long-term health. Because his emphasis is nutrition science, he does not use the term vegan but rather advocates for a 100% plant-based diet, stressing the empirical basis for his position. However, his books, articles and lectures have been hugely influential in leading thousands of people READ ON
The following is my letter to the editor of The Globe and Mail in response to their May 7th article, This sheep could save our bacon someday: Why farmers are banking on rare breeds. Some of the content here is excerpted from my book, Farm to Fable: The Fictions of Our Animal Consuming Culture. Letters to the editor can be sent to letters@globeandmail.com. Dear Editors, Overall, the READ ON
The following is an interview between Robert Grillo of Free From Harm and Bessie VonMessenger, a former animal farmer turned vegan activist living in Waco, Texas, whom we recently discovered from footage of a slaughterhouse vigil on Facebook. This is her story. Tell me a bit about your childhood and family life. How did growing up on a farm or farming environment shape who you READ ON
How often do we hear it said, ‘I hardly eat any meat’, or ‘I only take a drop of milk in tea’? It is as if we consider that the level of misery that we demand as consumers can be scaled down by such reductions. This view occurs because we refuse to see our victims as individuals. Yet for the individual whose pitiful life was cut short in the gore and terror of our slaughterhouse so that we READ ON
Many human rights proponents fear that animal rights diminishes human rights in some fashion. This might explain why most human rights proponents and organizations still either ignore animal rights, or are actively hostile towards it. In this article, I show that such a view is not only flawed, but counterproductive. Animal rights does not undermine human rights, while arguing against animal READ ON
